UK HealthCare to deploy Allscripts EHR, Practice Management solution for faculty providers

UK HealthCare, the patient care operations of University of Kentucky, will deploy the Allscripts (Nasdaq: MDRX) Electronic Health Record and Practice Management solution to help its team of 6,000 physicians, nurses, pharmacists and health care providers enhance the quality of patient care, improve patient communications, and better manage the cost of care delivery.

The ambulatory systems will be integrated with UK HealthCare's existing Sunrise Enterprise™ acute care Electronic Health Record, enabling caregivers in the health system's three hospitals and more than 80 specialty clinics collaborate for a team approach to patient care.  UK HealthCare, an award-winning tertiary clinical care and research health system, will upgrade to the Sunrise Enterprise™ version 5.5 suite that includes Helios by Allscripts™, an industry-defining open architecture platform designed to promote enhanced exchange of data between disparate software systems while lowering total cost of ownership.

"Deploying Allscripts for our faculty providers and connecting them to our inpatient health records system is a critical strategic imperative for UK HealthCare that will let us realize the full benefit of having one patient record across the continuum of care," said Dr. Michael Karpf, Executive Vice President for Health Affairs at the University of Kentucky. "Above all, expanding our partnership with Allscripts will help us advance our mission of providing excellent, cost effective care to our patients while supporting our mission as an academic medical center."

UK HealthCare First in Nation to Earn Federal Incentives

The agreement with Allscripts positions UK HealthCare's physicians to qualify for federal EHR incentive payments under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA). To qualify, hospitals and physicians must submit data to Medicare and Medicaid demonstrating their "Meaningful Use" of the technology, which automates many clinical tasks, minimizing human error, and connects caregivers to each other and to stakeholders including labs, pharmacies, insurers and patients.

In January, UK HealthCare became the first hospital in the nation to receive ARRA incentive payments for the Medicaid portion of the program, which requires that a hospital have in place an acute care EHR certified for the ARRA program by the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC).  All Allscripts Electronic Health Records have been so certified.

Tim Tarnowski, UK HealthCare's Chief Information Officer, commented, "Our faculty providers were impressed that Allscripts combined high levels of functionality with an intuitive, customizable user interface that lets them work the way they want to work. As a health system, we've been impressed with the performance of Sunrise across our inpatient setting, and we're excited about the power of the combined inpatient and ambulatory EHR to improve the care we provide patients in our communities."

Integrated Solution will Contribute to Clinical Excellence

Carol Steltenkamp, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer, noted that "having all of a patient's clinical information available on a give-and-take basis for our providers, no matter whether it originated with their primary care physician or the intensive care unit, is a huge contribution to clinical excellence."  

Dr. Steltenkamp added, "As an academic medical center, it's our job to teach the physicians of the future and they need to learn on systems like this that not only provide visibility to all elements of a patient's health but also alert them to clinical best practices."

UK HealthCare will deploy the Allscripts Clinical Quality Solution™ (CQS), which delivers real-time clinical decision support information to physicians, improving their ability to proactively manage chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. CQS retrieves data from the Electronic Health Record and practice management system to automate the quality reporting requirements of government and payer-funded "pay-for-quality" programs.

Glen Tullman, Chief Executive Officer of Allscripts, said the agreement with UK HealthCare is yet another example of the power of the company's integrated acute, ambulatory and post-acute solution offering.

"UK HealthCare, one of the leading academic medical systems in the nation, understands the importance of connecting physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals in every care setting to the latest patient information and best practices," said Mr. Tullman. "We are committed to helping UK HealthCare further improve the quality and cost of the care they provide by delivering one patient record that lets their world-class providers collaborate across transitions in care for a more effective team approach to patient health."

UK HealthCare facilities include the 473-bed UK Chandler Hospital, Kentucky Children's Hospital, UK Good Samaritan Hospital, UK HealthCare East, Kentucky Clinic, Markey Cancer Center, and Gill Heart Institute.

SOURCE Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc.